Worshipped throughout Mesopotamia during 3000 BC, Ereshkigal, the Great Goddess of the Underworld, is the only Mesopotamian god who could pass judgment and proclaim laws within her own kingdom. While the meaning of her name ‘Ereshkigal’ is ‘Queen of the Great Below’ or Lady of the Great Place’, the word Great is a reference to the vastness of her realm.

The ancient people of Mesopotamia believed in life after death and they also believed that after death, the departed soul had to stay in the Underworld, which was described as a dark, dingy and forlorn place, a realm of eternal gloom, where the souls of the dead were believed to drink from muddy puddles and eat dust. The Akkadians called the place Irkalla, while the Sumerians referred to it as Kur, where a person's quality of existence in the underworld was determined by his or her conditions of burial and there is no final judgment of the deceased and the dead were neither punished nor rewarded for their deeds in life.

According to mythical stories, Ereshkigal is the daughter of Anu, the personification of the sky and the supreme god of the Mesopotamian pantheon. The story says when Anu shed tears for being separated from Ki, his sister and lover, his tears mingled with the salty water of the primeval sea goddess Nammu, to give birth to Ereshkigal. She became the Queen of the Underworld after she was abducted by the first ever dragon Kur, who was also her half-brother. She could not be rescued even by the gods, as nobody can come back from the realm of the dead.

Ereshkigal had an important role in the mythical epoch ‘Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld’. It is depicted in the story, Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, made her journey to the Underworld, apparently to mourn and observe the funeral rites of Gugalanna, her brother-in-law. However, her actual intention was to take advantage of the situation and a hostile takeover the Underworld realm. But, Ereshkigal was apprehensive about her sister’s visit, because Gugalanna, her husband, was killed by Enkidu, the friend and comrade of Gilgamesh, when he was sent by Inanna to take the revenge and kill Gilgamesh for the insult of refusing her love.

So she instructed the gatekeepers that, Inanna should remove a piece of her attire or jewelry, before being allowed to pass through each of the seven gates of the Underworld. The instruction may be interpreted as the gradual removal of her power as she progressed deeper into the realm of her sister. Consequently, when Inanna reached the throne room of Ereshkigal, she was completely naked and therefore powerless. In fact, Ereshkigal stripped Inanna of her pride, her masks and her self- esteem. Eventually, she was executed for her crime and her corpse was hung from a hook on the wall. But, her death had terrible effects, which include cessation of all earthly sexual intimacy and fertility. Nevertheless, she was rescued from the Underworld alive by the tricks of the gods, in lieu of her cheating lover Dumuzi.

There is another mythological story relating to Ereshkigal, where it was depicted that, once she sent Namtar as her representative in a banquet arranged by the gods, as she was not in a position to attend it. As Namtar arrived the place, all the gods stood up out of respect for Ereshkigal, except Nergal, the war god. Ereshkigal felt insulted when she was reported about the incident and the enraged goddess of the Underworld demanded Nergal to be handed over to her for execution. While her demand was complied with, Nergal was provided with 14 demons for his aid at each of the seven gates of entry to the Underworld. To trap Nergal in her kingdom, Ereshkigal instructed her doorkeepers to shut all the gates one by one, after Nergal passed through each of them, but Nergal posted a pair of demons at each gate to keep it open. As he reached Ereshkigal, the war god overpowered her and when he was about to decapitate her with his axe, she pleaded for her life, promising to marry him and share her power in the kingdom, along with him. Nergal agreed, but as he was under obligation to leave the underworld for six months, Ereshkigal allowed his demons to traverse the upper world for that time, after which he returns to her.

While Ereshkigal was worshipped throughout Mesopotamia, Sumer and Babylon was complete with temples dedicated to her. Her Myths are found in the remnants of various Mesopotamian tablets and texts, including the epic of Gilgamesh.

There is no known universally accepted iconography for Ereshkigal. However, the Burney Relief, also known as The Queen of the Night, dating 1792-1750 BC, depicting a naked woman with downward-pointing wings standing on the backs of two lions and flanked by owls, strongly suggests a depiction of Ereshkigal. Nevertheless, it was also interpreted by others as the depiction of goddess Inanna or the demon Lilith.